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The disappeared villagers
The Stow Family Dad? Mom? Ida?!” “No, your folks didn’t get away. Your mom was in such a state of shock she couldn’t stand. Bass is taking care of her.” “Where are they?!” “Inside one of the Nobility’s facilities.” “And just where is that?” “By the northern cape.” “I see. And the rest of your group?” “They’re hiding nearby. Come with me.” As D sheathed his blade, he saw the girl sobbing, one corpse cradled in her arms while she clasped two others by the hands. “Your family?” he asked. “Dad … and Mom … and my little sister!” Meg clamped her jaws together. Nevertheless, her voice forced its way through her teeth. “You killed them … You left me … all alone in the world … What are you gonna tell me they did?” Toma There was no mistaking him. It was Toma. Meg’s boyfriend. The nineteen-year-old boy who swore he’d live his whole life in that village. “They’re safe,” Toma replied in his usual, somewhat rapid, tone. “Someof them escaped, and they’re with me.” Meg recalled how the strapping young man was the very picture of consideration. With only thin planks between them and hell, fishermen had rough dispositions. They had to be hard, or they couldn’t do the job. And while they recognized that Toma was as rough as any of them, the way he listened so attentively to the pearls of wisdom from an old minstrel who drifted into town, and his kindness in not only paying the man too generously for his services but also giving him some medicine because he was old had touched Meg’s heart. “You always were pretty perverted, you know that?” Meg said, making no motion to wipe at her streaming tears. “Every time you saw me, you’d always kiss me, try to touch me. But now, you didn’t try to lay a finger on me. I thought that was odd. And another thing—you said you were out hunting hares, but you didn’t have any gear for the job.” “If I’d let you touch me, you’d have known what happened to me … My body’s as cold as ice.” His position became clear. As she turned around, Meg raised her wooden harpoon and let it fly. Staggering to and from, Toma opened his mouth and spat out a stream of blood, revealing a pair of gory fangs. Toma stared in astonishment at the long, long stake that’d gone clean through his back. His expression seemed to say he didn’t understand what’d happened. “But … it’s not like we wanted … to be like this … I’m sorry … Meg!” “Who was it? Who did this to you?” “A pale woman … and an old man dressed like a servant. They said … we’d be … test subjects.” “Test subjects? For what kind of experiments?” “I don’t know … It’s just … the people who were here before … made human and Noble …” With a pop, Toma’s head flew into the air. Gass Kemp & Family Standing in front of the shop was the proprietor, Gass Kemp. And it wasn’t just him. His wife, son, both daughters, and even his bedridden grandmother all appeared, one after another, lining up right beside him. Meg got the feeling there was some invisible drill instructor right by them. The grocer and his family quickly set out on foot toward the bay. A number of figures appeared from behind the grotesquely shaped rocks. Each and every face was one Meg recognized. “Mr. Kemp. And Miss Hardy.” They were all villagers she’d watched walk off across the foggy bay. “So, you’re all okay. That’s great!” All the girl could do was watch as the heads of one villager after another shot into the air. Every last one of them fell back to earth with a stream of blood trailing after it. A little head rolled to Meg’s feet, its face looking up at her reproachfully. The head of Kemp’s son. He was only six, as she recalled. The Kapsch family The father, Nodd, was at the fore, leading a quintet of the village’s most accomplished fishermen. Old Kapsch and Hadira were bellyaching about how hungry they were. I thought maybe I’d find some night hares or something.” Hadira was the far-from-old Kapsch’s third son. It was little wonder a three-year-old would complain about an empty belly. Emilio Kapsch … Gialisuna Kapsch Auntie Mabel Passing by was an old woman who lived alone now that all her kin were dead, and the community looked after her. “That one’s … Auntie Mabel … and over there’s Mr. Ulmer … Emilio Kapsch … Gialisuna Kapsch … and Zacco … Raoul’s here, too. Everybody … you’re all okay … right?” “Oh, life here is wonderful. The Nobility made machines to do everything, and my infirmities don’t trouble me anymore. You know about al my health problems, don’t you? I have the gout in my right foot, and arthritis in the left. Any pressure on one or the other hurts like the bone’s been shattered. I’ve got an acute hernia that left me hunched over, and my liver, kidneys, and pancreas have all lost ninety percent of their function. My lungs are shot, so I get to coughing at night and can’t stop. Do you know how it feels to not be able to get to sleep every night out of fear you’ll suffocate? And all that got wiped away!” The old woman’s face was radiant with joy. Mr. Ulmer He was the most important person in the village—their shipwright, who would be ninety this year. Mr. Ulmer’s aged, sun-bronzed face appeared from the fog. “You know how I was in the final stages of lung cancer, right?” Mr. Ulmer continued. “Hell, you even came and visited me. But you know what? Not a single person from the town hall ever came. In eighty-two years of woodworking, how many boats you figure I made? How many did I repair? Now, I don’t wanna toot my own horn, but how many hundreds of lives have been saved by the double hulls I built, do you reckon? Meg, the town hall called in a new shipwright to replace me, didn’t they?” “The way I am now, I’ve got a hundred times the strength I had in my prime. Look at me! With this mallet and chisel I could probably build a boat from scratch in half a day’s time. But that’s not what I’m gonna use ’em for. I’m gonna use ’em for destruction. I’ll use ’em to pound those town hall bastards who couldn’t wait to see me dead into the ground once and for all.” Even Meg was surprised at how solid the hit felt. Actually, she’d not only driven her harpoon into Mr. Ulmer’s massive barrel chest, but poked it all thebway out through his back. “He was stabbed through the heart and he wasn’t destroyed—what the hell kind of creatures were they turned into?” “Ageless and indestructible,” d’Argent murmured. “Huh?” “The experiments carried out here were intended to turn humans into another form of life. I’m ageless, but not indestructible. Maybe the old man got the reverse.” Mr. Ulmer tumbled forward and fell to the floor, but even seeing that didn’t surprise the girl much because it all seemed so unreal, like she was watching a single frame from a silent movie. Even before she concluded the old man must’ve run out of power, his body had turned to ash. Miriam Hardy A month ago the young blonde had been widowed when she lost her husband in a storm, but they said she’d be married again inside of a month. Every bachelor in town had his sights set on her. “Oh, I get it. Is it these?” Miriam Hardy said with a smile, pointing to the corners of her lips. The pair of fangs didn’t suit the lovely widow. Nor did they look good on Mr. Kemp. Or on his family, who stepped out behind him. The moonlight seemed to focus solely on their fangs. “They got all of you, didn’t they?” Meg said, tears spilling from her eyes. “It happened before we even knew it, and we couldn’t do anything to stop it.” Shalkan's Wife, Togill's Little Boy & Old Man Ong “Togill’s little boy … Shalkan’s wife, and Old Man Ong …” familiar faces were arrayed there. Anger ensnared Meg. Old folks and kids had been thrown in there without a single bed, left to sleep on the floor. That was no way for anyone to treat a human being. Telling him not to say anything, she woke the other villagers. There were twenty of them. They were all that remained. All the rest had stained D’s blade. She didn’t need to count them to know exactly how many there were. “I’m too late, right?” Meg murmured. Something in her heart crumbled. “When we become like the Nobility, the marks on our throats disappear,” Togill’s son said. “It happened with all of us. You can be one of us, too, miss.”